Books &Commentary &Illustration 19 Mar 2008 07:58 am
Only God Can Make a Tree
- If you’ve only heard clips of the Obama speech given yesterday, spend the time and watch the whole thing. It’s time to plant apples here. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
- Mark Mayerson features an article on his blog about Frédéric Back and the news about an exhibit of his artwork. I’m not in Canada, so it’s hard to see the exhibit and the screeenings. However, I thought it might be a good idea to look again at Back’s stunning film, The Man Who Planted Trees. Naturally, I want to share what I’m viewing with you, so I thought to put up some frame grabs. This film, though, is so stunning, I don’t think fuzzy frame grabs will do.
I have a book of the film which was illustrated by Frédéric Back from art for the film. It’s in French, and I haven’t attempted to translate it. I’m posting these images purely for the artwork. Aside from the cover, all six images I’m posting are double-page spreads. The book has about 50 pages, so I may post more some other day, but for now enjoy these.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
on 19 Mar 2008 at 8:06 pm 1.Tim Rauch said …
Thanks for posting, I am a huge fan of Back and it’s great to see these stills (illustrations? whichever). I was kind of an “animation drawings” only animator for a while, not really sure how to get backgrounds to do what they ought to. It was really between Back and those amazing posts you did from Tell-Tale Heart that I came to understand how to design an animation background that you can move the camera through in an elegant way without having to “animate” the layout (my old approach which was laborious and frequently ugly). In “Man Who Planted Trees” and “Mighty River” you can really see the work of someone who has mastered his technique. Certainly the amount of work he poured into them is astounding but it’s equally striking to me how much juice he squeezes from each individual image you see in the film.
on 19 Mar 2008 at 10:22 pm 2.David Nethery said …
Thank you for posting these images from the book. I didn’t know there was a book based on the film. His drawings work wonderfully as illustrations for the book version.
This remains one of my favorite animated films.